The use of telephone (for example mobile telephone) network subscriber identification cards is known in itself; these cards, generally produced in the form of microcircuit cards, hold information (some of which is secret) relating to the subscription to services provided by the network.
The presence of this card in a telecommunication electronic device (such as a mobile telephone) thus enables that device (thanks to information contained in the identification card) to connect to the network and to exchange data with other network devices, for example data representing the voice of a speaker and generally encrypted by means of a secret key contained in the identification card.
It has already been proposed that such cards might (by means of the microprocessor that they contain) control the use of functions of the electronic device that receives them, like SIM Toolkit commands.
Although this solution introduces some flexibility into how the combination of the electronic device and the identification card functions, its functioning depends on instructions executed by the electronic device (in practice by its microprocessor), in particular steps that are executed when the electronic device is initialized, which steps naturally influence the nature of the remaining functioning of the combination.